I have spent my life inside Christianity. Missionary kid. Bible studies at the kitchen table. Seminary classrooms. Long nights of prayer. Fasting the trends. Decades of watching the Church wrestle with culture, intellect, power, and fear.
And what I am sensing now is not a crisis of doctrine.
It is a famine of encounter.
Somewhere along the way, we learned how to defend God more fluently than we experience Him. We mastered arguments. We sharpened theological nuance. We built platforms.
But the Spirit — the living, trembling, awe-filled presence of God — has quietly receded from the center of our conversations.
And the soul knows it.
The soul does not hunger for better theology; It hungers for the presence of God.
This is not a rejection of theology.
It is a call to reunite theology with the Spirit who gave it breath.
Today, we’re stepping away from the “figured out” life and into the numinous—the kind of encounter that doesn’t just inform your mind, but beautifully undoes it.
Understanding the Numinous: Where Awe Meets the Soul
I’m Angela Meer, and I’ve spent the last decade standing at the crossroads of two worlds: the deep, symbolic well of Jungian psychology and the ancient, mystical heart of the Christian faith. After years of graduate study and a PhD journey focused on how Carl Jung’s work breathes life back into theology, I’ve realized one thing:
We have plenty of maps, but we’ve forgotten how to walk the terrain.
In 1917, the theologian Rudolf Otto coined a term that would change how we talk about the Divine: The Numinous. He pulled it from the Latin numen, sensing that we needed a word for that specific, spine-tingling feeling of being face-to-face with the Wholly Other.
The numinous is:
Mysterium: It is beyond our logic.
Tremendum: It is vast, overwhelming, and humbles us to our knees.
Fascinans: It is irresistibly magnetic; we cannot look away.
Carl Jung was captivated by this. He saw in his patients (and himself) that true transformation doesn’t happen through a lecture. It happens when something rises from the depths of the soul—through a dream, a vision, or a moment of “holy awe”—and demands our attention. These moments don’t ask us to explain them. They ask us to feel them.
Spiritus Contra Spiritum: The Thirst for the Real
There is a famous story in the history of transformation that many don’t realize began in Jung’s consulting room. In the 1930s, a man named Roland Hazard sought Jung’s help for his chronic alcoholism. After every effort failed, Jung looked at him with a sobering, yet compassionate honesty:
“You are a hopeless case... Your only hope is a vital spiritual experience.”
Jung knew that Roland’s thirst wasn’t actually for the bottle; it was a “low-level” version of a much higher thirst—a thirst for the Spirit. Jung later summarized this in a letter to Bill W., the co-founder of AA, with the stunning Latin phrase: Spiritus contra spiritum.
Spirit against spirits.
The only thing powerful enough to displace a soul-crushing addiction (a “spirit”) is an encounter with the Living God (the Spirit). This is why the first and last steps of recovery are bookmarked by the numinous. We don’t “think” our way out of our deep bonds; we are carried out by an encounter.
The Eye in the Lake: An Invitation to Wonder
In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of a water that becomes a “spring inside us,” welling up to eternal life. This isn’t a metaphor for a better belief system. It is an invitation to a different kind of experiential and vivid life of Christianity.
A few years ago, I had a dream that perfectly captured this “terrifying beauty.” I was standing on a dock over a still, dark lake at night. From the depths, a creature began to emerge. It was ancient, vast, and strange. As it reached the surface, I saw its eye—an enormous, whale-like eye looking directly into mine.
In that moment, the “numinous” washed over me. I felt a paralyzing awe at its size and “otherness,” yet a profound, weeping peace because I knew, in the way only the soul knows, that it was a living symbol of God as “the Ancient of Days” (Daniel 7:9). And in that holy awe, I was loved.
I woke up and didn’t try to analyze the dream with my ego. I just sat in the feeling of being “known by the Ancient of Days.” I let the awe wash over me like a tide.
An Invitation to the Inner Room
These moments are not just rare; they are absolutely transforming if we let them be. But often, we don’t know how to name them or what to do with them once the “white light” fades.
The goal of this SubStack is genuine “community.” I want you to know that your aching needs for the Presence of God, the vibrant Spirit of God, are needs that He longs to answer.. While this journey is open to everyone, I am inviting you to become a Paid Subscriber to go deeper into the practical application of these mysteries.
As a shared traveler on this path, your membership unlocks:
Monthly “Biblical Symbolism” Workshops: Join me live each month as we dive into the living language of God. We will look at how the ancient symbols of Scripture—from the “eyes” of Ezekiel to the “living water” of John—are still surfacing in our modern dreams today.
The Gift of Discernment Training: Deep-dive articles where I share exactly how I process and bring the Holy Spirit and gift of discernment into my life. In the paid article attached to this free on I share exactly what followed my “Ancient of Days” dream. I’ll teach you how to apply the gift of discernment to your own life, moving past “clever interpretation” to truly hearing what the Spirit is saying to the churches (and to you).
Finding Your Earthly Mandate: Practical guidance on how God uses the “numinous” to reveal your unique role on the earth. This isn’t just about understanding a dream; it’s about understanding your calling.
The Symbolic Community: A dedicated space to share your own encounters and dreams with a community of believers who aren’t afraid of the deep water. Together, we walk this narrow, symbolic path where the Word and the Spirit meet.
Devotional Pause
Before you go, I invite you to a moment of real encounter with God. Remember, we are here not just for information, but transformation.
Recall: When was the last time you felt the “numinous”? Not a thought about God, but a shiver of His presence?
Reflect: Are you drawing closer to that mystery, or are you running from it because it feels too big to control?
Be Still: Give yourself three minutes of silence. Don’t pray words. Just exist in the “otherness” of the One who made you.
As St. Hildegard of Bingen once prayed: “O Holy Spirit… Make us vessels of your dreaming breath.”
The “Sacred Threshold”
“For God speaks again and again—though people do not recognize it. He speaks in dreams, in visions of the night...” (Job 33:14-15)
We do not suffer from a lack of theology.
We suffer from a lack of encounter.
The Church does not need another argument to win. It needs men and women who have stood before the Holy and lived to tell the story.
This is why I’ve moved this work to Substack: not to create content. But to gather people in community who are ready to steward the mystical heart of the Church again.
If what you felt while reading this wasn’t agreement — but recognition — then you already know this invitation is for you.
Paid membership is not access to information.
It is access to formation.
Inside the Christian Jung community, we practice:
Learning the language of symbol
Discerning the voice of the Spirit
Bringing dreams into the light without fear
Recovering the biblical imagination that once shaped saints
We are not abandoning theology. We are reuniting it with the Spirit who wrote it.
If you are ready to move from analysis to encounter — from commentary to consecration — I invite you to step across the threshold.
Community Discussion Prompts
The “Ancient Eye”: Angela shared a dream of being “known” by God as the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7:9). Have you ever had a dream or a moment in nature where the “scale” of God felt overwhelming, yet strangely comforting?
Spiritus contra Spiritum: Jung suggested that our deepest cravings (for substances, control, or validation) are often “low-level” versions of a spiritual thirst. Does this reframe any of your own internal struggles in a more compassionate light?
The Numinous vs. The Logical: Why do you think we find it so much easier to talk about “end-times theology” or “church politics” than to talk about the actual, spine-tingling presence of the Holy Spirit?
“The soul does not hunger for better theology; It hungers for the presence of God.” Yes!!! This resonates so deep.